thanks for the explaination of boot rom -- I ask because I had no idea what it is and google failed me.

Well, I believe that I solved the "failure to see the hard drive" problem...
My asus mobo has two serial ata configurations in the bios -- Enhanced and Compatability.
It was set on the enhanced mode -- which was apparently designed to work better with NT and XP.
The compatability mode was designed for legacy os's -- and I guess linux is in the legacy os's.
Anhow it works -- I'm happy.

However -- If you will still bear with me -- I still have some partitioning questions.
The extent of my partitioning knowledge is that I know how to resize the windows primary partition in qtparted to create a separate 20 gig partition.
I got that -- But when I get to the prompt with the options on how to FORMAT that 20 gig partiton -- I get extremely intimidated.
I want to install linux in this partition -- but I don't know what options are optimal for a linux installation in that partition...
Like, should this be a primary or extended partition?
what partition type should it be? (ex3? ex2? FAT? etc.)
and I don't understand the concept of unallocated space...
I need to relearn how to use google....
-Soral 3.0

The answers to all of your partitioning questions are really much too lengthy for me to post here in one big lump-sum, but over the past number of years I (and others) have posted these answers for people who were trying to set up Win/Linux dual-boot systems. Give a read through the info in the following links and (if your brain hasn't exploded as a result of doing so), get back to us with any questions that you have:

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/searc...der=descending
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Install...on_System.html
http://www.justlinux.com/forum/searc...der=descending
The multi-boot/multi-OS HOWTOs at http://www.tldp.org

Oh, and just FYI: Google has a Linux-specific search section. Instead of just going to www.google.com, go to www.google.com/linux instead.

sweet -- thanks for all the resources
I can't seem to find them myself...
Thanks for the linux-specific google engine!
-Soral 3.0

yay!
I got my drive partitioned!
my 160 gig hd is now two drives -- one ntfs -- one ext3
I now have win xp and xandros opencd linux installed on my system
thanks for all you help DMR....
the Wobat of Happiness sniffles upon your good deed.

-Soral 3.0

Very cool; glad you finally got it going, and the Wombat is glad that the snuffling helped! :mrgreen:

Now that you can actually get started using Linux, here's a site you're really going to want to bookmark: The Linux Doncumentation Project.

The place has tons of free online (and downloadable) guides, FAQs, HOWTOs, and other resources that cover everything from basic system configuration to advanced networking topics.

linux cannot be installed on a extended partition ( extended means a container for the logical partitions)
, so it should be
a primary partition or logical partition .you can create extended partition and create logicals inside it.
well today linux supports every file system.but making it ex2 and mount it as / will make your life easy.

why does not use gparted. Its proven usefull.
i suggest download the image and burn to cd or ufd and boot..
there you go...resize windows partition and create a 2 partition (root n swap).

Gparted is available as a live CD which can do most of what PartitionMagic can do... and is free.